PRINT HEAD BASICS: Inkjet printer printheads are prone to blockage, whether through the use of poor quality and/or incorrect inks, or generally through neglect, poor maintenacne and/or limited use, whereby small droplets of ink settle on the printheads, dry and harden to the point where ink cannot pass through.

Printheads contain banks of very small Inkjet Nozzles (approx. 1/3 the diameter of a human hair). There are, depending on the printer model, upwards of 16, 32, 64 or more nozzles for each colour. If one or more of these nozzles are blocked, you will see colour skipping or bands of white on your printouts... often referred to as 'banding' or 'pin-striping'. Furthermore, your printer has to combine each of its available colours (BLACK, CYAN, MAGENTA, YELLOW in a four colour printer), in order to produce each of the 16 million colours that may be present in any image. If some of the printhead nozzles are blocked, then the colour reproduction will be off, anywhere from barely noticeable, to throw the prints out, and start again.

PRINT HEAD CLEANING BASICS: Every printer has printhead self diagnostic/cleaning functions built into the printer driver. Below are the steps required to access and use these functions for an EPSON R230/R310 on a PC running Windows XP Pro. Other Printers, PC's with different operating systems, and MAC's will have similar methods of accessing/utilizing those functions.

• Click on START/ PRINTERS & FAXES... This will bring up a page listing all of the printers that are installed on your system.
• RIGHT click on the icon for your printer, and a dialog box will appear with a list of available options.
• Click on PRINTING PREFERENCES and a second dialog box will appear with several tabs across the top.
• Select the MAINTENANCE tab.
• Print a NOZZLE CHECK.
• Match the printed pattern against the one provided... This will indicate which heads are printing poorly, or not at all.
• Perform a HEAD CLEAN, followed by another NOZZLE CHECK, and then compare the patterns again.
• Repeat the step above if neccessary, but do not perform more that 3 head cleans in a row. A cleaning cycle utilizes aggressive suction to force the ink through the nozzles, which can cause ink foam to build up in the printhead nozzles.

If the Nozzle Check test patterns look different each time, then this may indicate that the nozzles are not permanently blocked, just starved for ink, or they may have air trapped on top of, and/or inside them. If the test patterns don't change, then this indicates a permanent blockage, which means either more aggressive cleaning, or a new print head is required.

If your print problems are not resolved, then try the following options:

• Try printing one of the PURGE TEST PATTERNS below...
  • Purge patterns are vertical rectangles of each base color... BLACK (BK), LIGHT BLACK (LBK), BLUE (BL), CYAN (C), LIGHT/PHOTO CYAN (LC/PC), RED (R), MAGENTA (M), LIGHT/PHOTO MAGENTA (LM/PM), YELLOW (Y), designed to test the performance of inkjet printer printheads, clear blockages, or verify that the colours are being printed properly.
• Insert a new cartridge.
  • Make sure sure that air can enter the top of the cartridge. Most inkjet cartridges are vented on the top via a serpentine groove under the label that leads to a vent hole. New cartridges have have a pull-tab that must be pulled to expose the vent hole. For Canon cartridges, ensure that the soft sponge material at the nozzle end, is not pushed up into the cartridge (a common problem with canon printers). If so, then gently pull it back or pry it downward, so that it is flush with the bottom of the cartridge nozzle.
• Allow the printer to settle overnight and try some more testing the next day.
  • This will give any trapped air and/or ink foam time to disappear or move away from the print nozzles.
• Try our InkTec Printhead Cleaning Solution.

PURGE TEST PATTERNS:

• Left click on a thumbnail image... Purge image will open in a new window.
• Select FILE/ PRINT to print the image from within your browser.
• Right click on a thumbnail image or on image in new window & select "SAVE IMAGE AS" to download the image to your hard drive for printing with your preferred software.

Note: saved image will be full size (600 x 720 pixels).